So, it has been a while since a preface was put on one of these. I should provide some more background on what’s happening in class and what the environment is in which these essays are being written. First and foremost I should talk about the grades as well as what has been going on in class. A lot of my writing for class makes no bones about trans issues and what I will post today is quite blistering in that respect. My teacher also knows I’m a trans woman since I outed myself to him. What my writing and my commentary in class has done, much to my surprise, was prompt my professor to devote a couple of class days to transgender issues specifically, the first of which was this evening. It went quite well, I have to say. I also got the grade back for my first essay, which I will post tomorrow. It was an A. All the articles you’ve seen posted since Part I have received perfect scores (10 out 10 on the grading scale he uses for these journal entries) and this one was no exception- he actually thanked me for taking the time to write it.

This is all, in various ways, monumental. It means the world that in the very bastion of feminist theorising where once stood transphobic cis women who used their perches to rain fire down upon their sisters and brothers of trans experience that I am now so openly accepted and finding my trans perspective acknowledged, embraced, and graded highly. It also is quite telling that by speaking out, by refusing to be silent, my professor owned up to what he himself described as his privileged oversight of trans issues in the syllabus and bits of transphobia in some of the readings, which have already been explained at some length in this space and in the class itself. By speaking out, I made my voice heard and ensured that all of the other students were given more education on trans issues than they would’ve otherwise had. It’s a tiny step, but it’s still something from which I take a good deal of hope.

The class tonight was relatively good. I was more than a little disheartened when the professor had to write the names of two trans writers we were reading today (Jamison Green and Susan Stryker) with the respectively appropriate ‘he’ and ‘she’ pronouns beside them because people kept misgendering Mr. Green even as they seemed to agree with a lot of what he was saying. Nevertheless, when I came out to the class it appeared to be well received and a good discussion was had to which I unashamedly contributed. I had often spoken up about trans issues throughout the course (and many other things besides, I should hasten to add) but often from a third person perspective. Today I was able to say “I” and “we”- that was powerful and it felt good, it felt right.

It gave it a bit of a twisting dagger effect when I spoke of trans chasers who over idealised trans women as somehow more docile and submissive to male power than cis women, to which I said “and I often think ‘well, you haven’t met me, brother.’ ” I got a few smiles and laughs for that, and that was the power of the positive seizure of my identity as a trans woman in a public space.

So, that’s where things stand. Matters are going very well in class, both academically and socially. What follows is a piece whose fire was born directly of the readings it cites and is something whose boundaries fall far outside the walls of my classroom. It was a piece that surprised even me as I was writing as it carried me to many places I didn’t fully expect. It details one of the realisations I’ve had recently- that more than my gender has changed. My outlook and my politics have changed, quite powerfully and radically. From my transition came second thoughts about my culture and my place in it, what it meant to be Latina rather than Latino among so many other things. It’s a piece that I think fits in fairly well with my autobiographical entries and it charts an element of transition that most people don’t think of when they imagine a transsexual or transgender transition. Without further ado, here’s entry #4 of 5 in our ongoing series:

In No Turning Back this week Estelle Friedman explored women in art in broad strokes overviews that provided a good smattering of information on the subject, and she began with the seemingly unrelated issue of language in regards to sex and gender in society. Along with Laurel Richardson in her thoughtful essay “Gender Stereotypes in the English Language” it provides a formidable introduction to the subject of linguistic politics. We often understand language as being value neutral and simply reflective of the realities we are surrounded by. The points made by both Richardson and Freedman illustrate that language often reinforces cultural subordination and social stereotypes. The pseudogeneric “man” is perhaps the best example and is quickly used by both academics to buttress their arguments. The widespread idea, weakened now but still powerful, that both men and women can be presumed to be included under “mankind” and the generic “he” and “his” is illustrative of how men are still socially perceived to be the default sex, the unmodified human, whereas women must be specifically marked- whether it be through the use of suffixes or titles like Mrs. that construct the woman in relation to a man in her life, or in relation to men in general. The backlash against efforts to change this language as so much “political correctness” is evidence of the fact that in some quarters this language is still deeply cherished.

I feel Freedman deserves credit also for shining a light on the fact that linguistic questions are not just a preoccupation of western or white feminism, but have also long been understandable concerns of non English speakers with their own languages. One of the best parts of No Turning Back, I feel, is that Freedman does more than most of her contemporaries to at least introduce readers to feminism as it has been expressed globally, and by women of all races throughout the last two hundred years. Although her narrative on non-Americans feels like a “oh and these people did this too” at times, it feels much more expansive and insightful than most histories of feminism and definitely introduces even to experienced activists events and issues they may not have known about.

On the subject of elevating historically unheard voices, we turn now to Gloria Anzaldua’s powerful Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers, which in many ways I felt was speaking to a part of my soul that I had long suppressed. I’ve owned This Bridge Called My Back for a couple of months now and each reading feel as if it reawakens and reinvigorates something I had trained myself to suppress. I was once ashamed to be Puerto Rican and very much an apologist for white privilege. “White liberalism” was a concept I only began to understand in the last two years but it was something I had lived for many years before that. This is the backdrop to my very personal response to Speaking in Tongues and indeed much of Bridge as well. Many of the articles are united by a sense that has stalked me all my life, a sense of being caught between worlds and running between consciousnesses, a never ending struggle to reconcile different worlds I inhabit, and being the titular bridge that people use to understand others different from them. What it meant to be a writer and a thinker in the midst of that also preoccupies many of Bridge’s authors. I always found myself- and still find myself- struggling to hold together my academic bend and lived reality, doing everything I can to let the latter inform the former, rather than letting those from on high tell me how I should articulate my vision. That struggle is, in part, at the core of Anzaldua’s Tongues piece. For me I have tried to pull together the white milieux I have often inhabited with my Puerto Rican heritage, and the fact that I was socialised male with the reality that I was female, and all the myriad complexities of gender that come with simply being a trans woman. The battles great and small, the little daily negotiations, the stray hair on my wrist, the croak of my voice, the fear walking down the street. This is what fills my pen even as I write my most turgid academic prose, and when I read Gloria Anzaldua’s piece for the first time I felt like she was describing some of the conflicts I felt as I tried to do so. I do not want to sell out, to be la Vendida, I do not want to forget where I came from; indeed I put a grinding halt to my decade long effort to do so, not coincidentally after I came out and understood oppression for the first time.

As I read Tongues I found it suffused with the same passion and glorious rage that often guided each stroke of my own hand, each thrust of my finger on the keyboard, and my soul sang out once more as I felt acknowledged in reading this. She was talking to me, I thought. Here is, at last, a powerful, intellectual feminist activist who knew where I came from and could scold me for not taking more pride in it. Here is someone who knew the streets I walked down, who knew my abuela’s voice, my father’s abuse, who knew the symphony of a subway train, and the hot summers of the inner city. I had the same feeling when I read earlier pieces in this anthology, including “…And Even Fidel Can’t Change That!” by Aurora Levin Morales whose words still haunt me for how true they rang with me. She too was a precocious and intelligent Puerto Rican girl from the South Bronx who was all too keenly aware of the gossamer thin line between her and the many people around her who “didn’t make it”- who fell into poverty, drugs, and prison, who was keenly aware that luck saved her from that. Not her intellect or her skill, sheer good fortune at having a father who could access the middle class saved her. Morales made me confront the fact that I knew exactly the same thing, and I nearly  wept because I knew in my heart- knew beyond knowing- that it was true.

Anzaldua enjoins us… enjoined me… to reach inside and find that part of myself that I had buried, that had denied the fact that I was Latina, that even whispered to me in words dripping with temptation to use and abuse my passing privilege to forget I was a transsexual woman, to leave behind my brothers and sisters because I had a shot at power, at conditional privilege. I know now I would rather listen to her and the benefit of her hard won wisdom. She exhorts us to cast aside pseudo-objectivity, that ‘point of view from nowhere’ that Donna Haraway rightly identified as something that obscures reality and silences voices that do not conform to those who get to decide what objectivity actually is. Gloria Anzaldua does not just entreat us to consider an alternative, but openly cheers us on to embrace our deeper voices, our emotions, our passions, and above all our actual lives. She reclaims the lived life as a site of epistemology without equal for both Third World women and all marginalised peoples. In that oppression, she seems to say, we can find the strength to propel past its strictures and dare to raise our voices, dare to be heard, and dare above all to be real and true to ourselves as we speak.

Being trans is a lengthy and ongoing exercise in being true to one’s self. I came out as a woman in perhaps the ultimate exercise in doing so; it was a fundamental rejection of conformity, knowing all the challenges I would face and the immense privileges I would be conceding, I did it because truth to who I was mattered above all else. I know now, in no small part due to writers I admire like Gloria Anzaldua, that once that great act of magic is performed, there is no stopping it. It is a gale force storm you summon, whose wind changes everything you thought you knew. I had felt that all that would change when I came out was my gender. I didn’t know my writing would go with it. What fills my pen now, what makes the swirls appear on my page is something altogether different that Gloria Anzaldua pinned down perfectly in this piece. It is the accessing of a rich, powerful anger that arises from both experience and a potent, perspicuous sense of justice.

It is hard for me, if not impossible, to remain “objective” when speaking about Bridge and that is altogether fitting. This is what Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua wanted, I believe. That emotional reaction that can only come from a woman of colour seeing their faces shimmer in the reflection of their blood red words. Many of these authors spoke to me and identified parts of my soul that make up the woman I am. La mujer de color that I am now proud to say I am. They know my struggles with my words, with “unlearning the esoteric bullshit and pseudo-intellectualising” that I picked up from years of schooling and reading the New York Times. What I got from that was not that I should break up my often ponderous writing style, because that multisyllabic pattern is very much my own. I will always be the geeky woman. But I will no longer be simpering or an apologist. I will no longer deny myself the power and the fuel I need to write with potency and meaning. I embarked on that project long ago when I first came out, and the difference showed, the new self awareness showed. What I have written, the words that flew from my fingers, powered by Katherine-who-is-trans, by I who said from the beginning I would not be ashamed of being trans, has moved people to tears, has inspired them, has helped other trans women come out, has comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable…

That is power that makes known to me the visceral veracity behind Anzaldua’s words.  It was how I knew what she said was utterly true even as I read the words for the first time. I knew my strength came from taking power from the truth of my life, my self-knowledge, and my experience. Not from trying to regurgitate a cis-friendly, cis-centric perspective on my life. As I go forward I will try to relearn and recapture what I had denied myself of my Latina heritage, which will take more time. But coming out, I find, is a journey that never ends.

That is what I got from Speaking in Tongues. I hope I do Gloria’s spirit proud.

This evening I started an introductory Women and Gender Studies class which I’m taking over the Summer to both help me catch up and get me a headstart on one of my two major tracks. I am very excited, of course, and I had a good evening in the first class today. I was also very pleased to see that I had done several of the readings on the course syllabus, and was able to confidently explain a lot of things to my classmates during our group session, so I’m in a very good position to make this a breezy month.

One of our regular assignments is to write a weekly journal entry on our readings. What follows is the first entry, hot off the presses and emailed to my professor moments ago. The class is designed to emphasise the voices of women of colour and other groups that have been traditionally marginalised from feminist and activist discourse, and in that spirit I’m bringing the trans perspective in as well. The following entry will, I hope, set the tone of my participation for the next month (and provides convenient blog material!). Where it is relevant, I will always try to provide a ‘trans response’ to material that directly or indirectly bears on us, or excludes us. I also hope this will provide a bit of background for those interested in gender studies and the ideas, debates, and theories percolating within.

Enjoy.

Judith Lorber’s ‘Night to His Day’ is a foundational text in the women and gender studies canon, and has been included in countless anthologies usually as an introductory overview of a feminist theory of gender and its socially constructed nature, as well as its ramifications. It is not a wholly inaccurate view, either. For instance her analysis of stratification has, for me, the ring of truth; the nature of privileged groups of people and how they are often understood implicitly to be the neutral or default group. As she says “white is not ordinarily thought of as a race, middle class as a class, or men as a gender. The characteristics of these categories define the Other as that which lacks the valuable qualities the dominants exhibit.” As will be explored later in the readings, such is inscribed in the marrow of our very language- the pseudogeneric ‘man,’ mankind, and so on.

Where Man and Human are synonymous, in other words, it is indicative of how- in the case of gender- men are understood as the default neutral category of humanity. Where people are distinguished by their signified group, be it people of colour, women, transgender people, the poor, and so on, what it is they are ‘marked’ with is often a stereotype. Usually it is a negative one, but other stereotypes (with multiple intersecting meanings) can be seen in other ways. The placement of white women on the storied pedestal, for instance, or the stereotype that all black men are adept at sports, or all Asian people are skilled at maths and engineering. These represent signified characteristics that are assumed to be inherent to these groups, where as the generic cisgendered white man has no such stereotypes attached to him. This connects to Orientalism and other forms of exoticisation very easily.

Lorber also speaks of “doing gender” which is a very critical concept. We often think of gender as something one has or that one is. We use the terms sex and gender interchangeably, helped along by infinite government and corporate forms that use each term to basically mean the same thing: do you have a penis or a vagina? The number of assumptions such a binary question is lardered with are myriad beyond words and well beyond the scope of this brief essay. Suffice it to say, that complexity is bespoke when one says that gender is something you do rather than something you are. Lorber’s exploration of the mental process she went through as she tried to ‘gender’ a baby she espied on the New York City Subway is part of an excellent introduction to her work, as it speaks to something all of us do on a daily basis, myself included, often without thinking. The never ending drive to put people into category A or category B. That is what makes her failure further along in the text so incredibly frustrating for me, personally.

In this day and age when one speaks of the complexity of gender, its performance and its socially constructed nature, those of any degree of sophistication will invariably bring transgender people into the discussion and often, in my view, cackhandedly. While the theoretical model sketches out broad truths, some of which I have hitherto elucidated, I feel it too often tries to force trans people into its framework in a way heedless of their actual experiences. For example, when she says “Billy Tipton, a woman, lived most of her life as a man. She died recently at seventy four…” she is erasing, and dare I say gleefully trampling on Mr. Tipton’s knowledge of himself as a man. Putting him in the category of “female transvestites” erases his experience in a flagrantly transphobic way. His whole life and career, his clearly expressed sexual and gender identity, none of that was enough to dissuade Ms. Lorber from misgendering and erasing him so that he could fitted into her theoretical paradigm. Furthermore, her entire discussion of “female transvestites” is very historically suspect and constitutes wilful appropriation of transgender history. We simply do not know how many of these people were actually trans men, how many were butch lesbians, how many didn’t truly identify with either prescribed gender, and so on.

For me, it makes it extremely difficult to take seriously her academic sincerity when she then says “genders, therefore, are not attached to a biological substratum.” This is absolutely true, and it is an idea that is well understood throughout modern gender studies. Yet despite her saying this, she still feels the need to access that mythic substratum when discussing Mr. Tipton and his life. Her entire phraseology in that section implies a falsity to his identity, leads readers to think “he’s really a woman” and treats elements of his life- being a father, a husband, ‘one of the boys’ with his musical partners- as mere artifice exercised by his sartorial choices (which is, after all, what transvestite refers to).

This fundamental failure on her part spoils an otherwise good piece and illustrates how trans people remain a blind spot in cis dominated gender studies.

The second reading, Marilyn Frye’s Oppression, is another pathbreaking reading in gender studies courses because it illustrates at some length what is meant by the term “oppression” which appears so often in left wing politics, emancipatory academia, and social justice movements. Frye’s accomplishments with this piece are twofold. One, she illustrates how when a marginalised person points out some oppressive act (like, say, a single act of employment discrimination or a single act of sexual harassment) they are not saying they are oppressed because this one isolated event befell them. Their claim to oppression relies on this recent material event as an example of one thing among many that disadvantages them. An example of the systemic nature of oppression that allows things like this to happen. Ms. Frye compares them to bars in a bird cage. One by itself, if focused on and analysed in the absence of all the other bars, does not seem to an outsider to be ‘oppressive’- which is why rather than focusing on one instance of oppression and navel-gazing at it, attempting to rationalise or excuse it, one has to pull back and see that it is not the only bar preventing the marginalised from spreading their wings.

Her second accomplishment is making a powerful statement against the ‘definition creep’ of the word oppression. Some people who do not belong to historically disadvantaged groups cite instances of hardship, tragedy, or suffering in their lives as if to claim that because they don’t have it easy either, they are also oppressed and therefore some cosmic balance of oppressions occurs and through such alchemy, white men are no longer privileged. Frye distinguishes oppression by saying that the occurrence of an unfortunate event is not in and of itself oppression. It has to be part of a system that is attacking you because of who you are. White men are very rarely explicitly discriminated against for being white men. Virtually no one is discriminated against simply for being cis. Able bodied people are not singled out for bigoted jokes, scrutiny, pity, or discrimination. But women are, people of colour are, transgender people certainly are, and disabled people are. Therein lies the difference.

Her illustration of double binds also provides a useful distinguishing characteristic of oppression. In her words, such moulds, immobilises, and reduces; it creates the ‘press’ in oppression. The “networks of forces and barriers” that surround various oppressed groups are of great significance. The difference between a cis white man and a transgender woman of colour is that many people feel entitled to decide whether the latter has a right to live, for no reason other than the fact of her gender identity. It is still a disturbing reality that many cis people, commenting on a news story about the murder of a trans woman by a boyfriend or other male antagonist, try to rationalise it by saying that it is completely understandable that a man would want to kill a woman who’s “really a man.”

In this lies the reason Ms. Lorber’s critical failure is so disturbing. Her casual misgendering and appropriation, even if she never holds a knife in her hand, helps perpetuate the very system of oppression that enacts that double bind on transgender people and puts their lives at risk. In a curious way, it helps illustrate Frye’s concept of oppression as pervasive, binding, and institutional, and how that sort of thing is broadly distinguished from non-oppressive tragedy and situational suffering. The entitlement to the bodies of women, be they pregnant women, disabled women,  fat women, or trans women, is something cis white men qua cis white men do not have to confront regularly or en masse as a group.

<<EDIT: As of this afternoon Blizzard has officially backed down and will no longer move forward with their scheme to force players to use their real life names on the forums. This is, of course, a tremendous victory. One suspects that major media outlets talking about the “row” or “huge outcry” opposed to this idea finally moved their executives to give way. However, significant as this is, Real ID remains and some of the architectural issues I allude to below remain.>>

Yesterday I wrote at some length about my strident opposition to Blizzard’s absurd RealID scheme, something I’ve called the single worst idea I have ever seen implemented in the history of online gaming. I am rarely one to speak without qualifiers, but this surely merits it. The threat posed to women is very real. I myself was stalked in WoW, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could’ve been because it didn’t bleed into real life; he didn’t know my name, nor where to begin with finding out personal info about me. Others I’ve known have not been so lucky. Curiously I’ve actually heard people use that as an argument for RealID. It is often phrased as “well, if it happens already, then what’s the big deal?”

I am personally quite flabbergasted at this line of reasoning. It’s happening already so let’s just make it easier?

I have a few more ideas for Blizzard to consider.

• Has a female player had an abortion? If so, why not note it in their RealID friends’ list? Never know who might be interested! Who wouldn’t want a tank that could endure that kind of real life drama and ponderous decisionmaking? Just send the clinic records to Blizzard’s billing department and remember, it has to include your full name and Social Security number if possible.
• Had to declare bankruptcy in the last ten years? Probably, considering the economy! Well, don’t you think it’d be fair to let everyone know? After all, if you’re bad with money, people selling to you in the Trade District of Stormwind really ought to know this before setting you up on an instalment plan for that uber enchantment or Blacksmithing item. Just mail the court documents to Blizzard billing so no one can accuse you of being a dirty dirty liar.
• Photographic avatars containing pictures of genitalia. You know, just to make sure you aren’t misrepresenting yourself! Send two colour photos of your naughty bits and your birth certificate.
• Posting peoples’ addresses is a surefire way to really get them to network with others. Their guildies will absolutely love knowing where to send flowers and cards to their favourite DPSer or healer. It saves you the trouble of opening up a private chat window to someone you trust and having to type it out every single time! Just send Blizz Billing a copy of your bank statement and a utility bill.

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if something vaguely along these lines wasn’t already in the offing. I could go on with the snark, really. Many more links could serve as elucidating examples of why this is unequivocally bad. Even the demographic of young white cis men have something to fear. Men can get stalked too. And more than one has already been killed over in-game disputes that have spilled over into real life. Men and women in professional positions want to very much keep work and play separate. Trans men and women, non-binary identified people, all manner of LGBTQ people, might not want their online personae associated with a real name. Countless people have exes they’d rather not hear from again.

The list of grievances goes on. But the ultimate question is why is this happening at all?

The answer appears to be: Facebook.

But it isn’t just the deal outlined there that’s troubling, it’s the fundamental philosophy behind it. Yesterday I expressed my extreme scepticism at Blizzard’s troll-beating rationale for this forum change and I have not been dissuaded from this view. They know as well as anyone that the WoW forum’s are 4chan’s rectum but they’ve had six years to do something about it, over which time not even the most incremental of changes have occurred, other than cosmetic ones. Threats made against the lives of their own employees did not move them to engage in stricter moderation. This latest, sweeping change of the forums has much more to do with the upper echelons of Blizzard-Activision wanting to cash in on the new social networking boom.

Some have said that because it’s optional and not fully integrated, it’s the quintessential “not a big deal.” I disagree and here’s why:

“6. Real ID is optional.

Only the illusion is optional. Your real name is linked to your toons and already exposed via addons even if you never opt-in or use the Real ID feature. You can test this by running the following:

/run for i=1,100 do if BNIsSelf(i)then BNSendWhisper(i,”RealID whisper from yourself..”);break end end

While this only displays your own real name, it does demonstrate the the connection has already been made, without your approval. And that it could be accessible to a third-party addon developer. When Blizzard merges accounts with Facebook (their next move), will the connections to Facebook friends already be pre-established, even if you don’t opt in? If so, how will Blizzard/Facebook use that information?”

Thus it’s quite clear that Blizzard “has plans,” as they say. The architecture is already there for an expansion of this service and it is indeed ‘fully integrated’ at this point.  To be quite honest I do indeed wonder if Bobby Kotick dreams of players running around with their real names over their characters’ heads rather than an in-game handle. It no longer seems so far-fetched to think so.

This is not why I and many other gamers play online games. If we want Facebook we will go to Facebook. If we want Twitter, or Beebo, or MySpace, we will use those sites. It’s ironic, really. It’s the same criticism I’ve often levelled at newer MMOs that aped World of Warcraft rather than forged their own original direction. Of them I often said “if I wanted to play WoW, I’d go to WoW.” Well, it seems WoW is no longer content with just being WoW.

The gaming experience is about separation from real life, letting your dreams and fantasies take flight, however simple or elaborate they might be. It’s about relaxing in an engaged way and losing yourself in the mystery of another world. I still remember the first time I ran my characters through Shadowglen, how vivid and inviting the misty forests of this world were and how far away the cares of the real one was. That separation is a prerequisite of whatever sort of fun you wish to have in these games, be it roleplaying- as I often did, raiding, PVP combat, or simple grinding and trading. You leave the real world behind for a few hours and immerse yourself in a bath of fantasy.

Now the executives at Blizzard-Activision want to destroy one of the crucial pillars of what makes an online game what it is. There is, of course, a philosophy behind this and it is expressed very neatly here:

“[Zuckerberg] disagrees with the notion that people have different identities. To him, the idea that someone is different at work than at home, than at a rock concert, is dishonest. Says Kirkpatrick, “He believes that he will live a better life personally, and all of us will be more honest, and ultimately it will be better for the world if we dispense with that belief.” ”

Mr. Zuckerberg can kindly stick a goose up his arse and I’ll explain why using my usual flawless logic.

My own personal history. I had to be a different person in World of Warcraft than who I was expected to be in the physical world. For the sake of my own sanity and to prevent me from self harm; the ability to free myself of the pervasive and all consuming lie that my life once was can not be overvalued in how precious it was. Were these two sides of my being fundamentally part of who I was? Two spheres of the same whole? Yes, absolutely. But the difference in their prevalence at that point in my life was stark. Each side of me had a context that I could not shake. I could not let the woman I was burst forth back in 2006, I wasn’t ready and the consequences would’ve been disastrous. But in a controlled way, I could begin building a prototypical new me through my roleplaying and writing online, including in places like WoW.

There was no “dishonesty” there. There was a lot I hadn’t figured out at that time. Did you know everything about yourself when you were 19? I didn’t think so. Part of the long and winding road to self-understanding went through World of Warcraft for me.

Secondly, it is very much true a person can present different sides or shards of themselves in different social environments. It’s not necessarily dishonesty that compels this. It could be a person’s taste, or desire, to let different parts of themselves show at different times. When I speak in class or to gatherings of professors, I am magisterial, professional and my voice is leaden with argent verbiage. When I’m speaking to my friends I… sometimes do exactly the same thing. But other times I curse and laugh mellifluously and make dirty jokes and talk about geese and peoples’ butts as well as poop jokes!

Mr. Zuckerberg, no one has the right to make those worlds overlap except yours truly.

You do not get to arrogantly decide in your creepily paternalistic manner that we’d all be simply better off if we just accepted that our “real names” and photos define who we are and that we only have one dimension to our beings. I’m sure that’s an attractive bit of ideological pabulum for a lazy business philosopher but from where I’m sitting and from the perspective of the many people I’ve known and loved, it is more than a little bit of self-entitled bullshit.

No one decides what to do with the multiple sides of our personalities or phases of our lives but us. If we want to create a completely different persona for ourselves in an online game, we should be able to as long as we’re somehow helping pay the bills for the maintenance of said game.

Trans women I’ve spoken to and heard from already have been frantically calling Blizzard and being compelled to, of all things, mail in court orders and birth certificates. An online game goes from being fun fantasy to feeling like the Department of Motor Vehicles. We move from a game where your identity is entirely self determined, and the numbers and names of your ‘real’ self are kept under lock and key beneath an impenetrable veil of secrecy… to a game where your juridical, state-sanctioned identity is shackled to you like a ball and chain, even when you’re trying to escape.

Mr. Zuckerberg does not seem to have reckoned with the fact that the name and photo associated with one’s legal ‘identity’ is not the identity a person may most identify with.

We have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. Already we live in a world where your state-sanctioned identity stalks you at every turn, where a social insurance number is the only thing standing between you and a powerful individual knowing who you are, where you live, what you buy, what you eat, how many haemorrhoids  you have, when you went to school, the names of your loved ones, friends, and children, the value of your house, how much money is in your bank account… we are part of one big happy digital family now in an information civilisation. And now, at long last, a state identity is being forced on us in the one place we could escape from all that and possibly enjoy the unique pleasure of being known as someone else entirely, for reasons entirely innocent rather than “dishonest,” related to joy and peace rather than a desire to deceive. A desire to relax and forget the stresses of the ID number world.

This is what I meant yesterday when I said the implications went far beyond WoW.

I use Facebook primarily to stay in touch with a particular set of people and because my campus organisation needs me there. But I am not for one moment enamoured of its ideology, nor the fact that it is infecting what should rightly have been the polar opposite of that ideology. Perhaps most important of all, however, for Mr. Zuckerberg to understand: Facebook represents one aspect of peoples’ social lives, not their totality. Facebook is not the ultimate truth of who we are, it is not the Ur chat text of our lives, it’s one dimension that serves a variety of purposes for different people.

When I first played Neverwinter Nights multiplayer, the closest I came to an online game before I played WoW, what stunned me was the fact that I could choose my name. In a time when I was so loathing my given name, and the life I lead, the freedom to determine all of this information on a whim and not have to show this ID or that stamped form or this application signed and stamped in triplicate was amazing beyond words. “I can do that?” was my first thought. It planted the seed in my heart that would enable to me to change myself in the real world. But each time I made a new character and started afresh in a world where no one knew me by that horrid old name I was once cursed with, I flew.

I don’t want others to be denied the opportunity to experience that. If this all sounds dire it’s simply because events move forward. Things look bad now and they could very well get worse over time. More online game spaces may think this is just the bee’s knees and get on the social network bandwagon.

The good news is that these broad implications appear to have been intuited by the wider media. (BBC, MSNBC, CBC, ABC News, and more). We might be through the looking glass but we don’t have to stay there.

As I alluded to in my recent autobiographical posts, I was once a WoW gamer. Ahh, those were the days. I still miss those days, in fact! Which was why I was considering going back and firing up the ol’ Priestess so I could kick arse at raid healing again. I’m still in touch with plenty of WoW gamers, so my fingers remain ever so delicately situated on the pulse of that ageing but still powerful online gaming behemoth, including those times when it accelerates from WoW’s neverending and oh-so-entertaining drama.

Most in-game drama blow ups- this class getting nerfed, PVP being changed thus and so, raid gear altered in such and such a way-  is geeky wonk of the nerdiest kind. But Blizzard has recently decided to inaugurate a change that raises important philosophical questions in spaces far beyond the alluring vistas of Azeroth. Real ID.

“Recently, we introduced our new Real ID feature – http://www.battle.net/realid/ , a new way to stay connected with your friends on the new Battle.net. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about our plans for Real ID on our official forums, discuss the design philosophy behind the changes we’re making, and give you a first look at some of the new features we’re adding to the forums to help improve the quality of conversations and make the forums an even more enjoyable place for players to visit.

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.”

As I reread those words on one particularly slow and sweltering afternoon I turned them over in my mind thinking this must be some belated April Fool’s joke. They’d force people to post their real names as a condition of writing on the forums? There must be some caveat to this. Surely they meant the reverse? Posting the name of your WoW character with the option of showing your real name? But, nope. They’re deadly serious.

Ostensibly, this is to ‘clean up’ the forums but I find this logic to be entirely spurious. I’m intimately familiar with how much of a cesspool the WoW forums can be. I myself have called it the Internet’s Sphincter. Yet the solution to the problem, such as it was, would be greater and stricter moderation, as well as commonsense alterations that would make it less easy to troll the forums. Mind you, I’d miss all those Level 1 Troll troll accounts named Ipwnyou or somesuch. They gave WoW a certain zest, like a punch in the stomach that makes you vomit. But it’d be worthwhile to compel users to have only one forum account, rather than one account per in-game character, to avoid this Draconian nonsense.

We’ll leave aside the fact that Real ID bears exactly the same name as the US Government’s years long initiative to harmonise American state IDs and integrate national records, the same policy that now empowers all employers to rifle through their employees’ Social Security records (and outing transgender people who can’t yet change their gender markers at the SSA).

A very eloquent friend of mine who goes by the name Silverdawn in WoW, had this to add:

“As if WoW players weren’t already notorious for being almost completely off the fucking leash and prone to wildly inappropriate responses to trivia such as…oh, losing a drop to a hunter or having your class nerfed, which really totally hasn’t resulted in players lashing out with death threats to developers or yelling at their friends and getting piss-drunk because Warlocks deal 6% less damage now. Yeah, this is a community that’s always been fantastically well-behaved and couldn’t *possibly* misuse access to another player’s real life information.”

I really couldn’t have said it better. This change will not erase the ugly social forces that exist on the forums, merely displace them. Stalking happens in World of Warcraft already. It’s a fact of life for us- us primarily being women- and now Blizzard is proposing forum changes that would make it even easier for someone to have access to your personal information?

Some players and a few apologists for the idea have offered several- well, basically two- defences.

It’s your choice! Don’t use the forums, then!

My problem with this idea is manifold. The choice is a highly coerced one. “Use this service that you may like, but expose yourself naked to the world… or just stay silent” is not much of a choice. The concept of ‘choice’ is oft abused by those who pretend that a choice made with a gun to one’s head has not been in some way influenced.

The other problem I have is that those who this change won’t hurt will disproportionately be male and cis. Transgender people who have not yet changed their names legally cannot have their RealID name altered by Blizzard. This has already been confirmed after one trans friend of mine tried to do so. This change requires a court order, something normally reserved for banks, and government issued IDs. Now a trans person needs a court order to protect their privacy in a video game? Give me a break. “Just don’t use the forums”- and what? Add another thing to the already lengthy list of cis privileges?

Women as a whole are also going to be given the short end of the stick with this. I’ve known in my time several women who played as men to avoid unwanted attention. This blows them out of the water. Such a scenario could also expose transgender men. Finally, it gives potential stalkers a good headstart on information that could be used to track down their targets. The excuse of “well, don’t use the forums!”… It reeks of the same “well, just don’t go outside!” nonsense from people whose privileges render them incapable of understanding a life perspective different from their own. One shouldn’t intentionally make something like that less safe if it can be helped.

While the current system definitely does not keep everyone perfectly safe, the anonymity it affords is still much better than what the proposed alternative is.

This is not a choice, it is a heavily coerced choice.

Don’t rub your transgender whatsit it in our faces!

I couldn’t agree more. That’s exactly why this is a lousy idea. It ‘rubs my transgender’ in random people’s faces without me having any control over it. Well, not me personally; I have the privilege of owning several copies of Blizzard’s precious court order. But many of my brothers and sisters just ain’t that lucky, period. There’s no ethical reason that they should have to pay a price for this when they are just trying to play a silly amusing roleplaying game.

It’s the same logic I’ve used against people who’ve whined about trans people changing their ID gender markers: if you don’t want me to “rub it in your face” then let me have an ID that does not call attention to my assigned sex at birth, ‘kay? You’ll never know the difference!

It is, at heart, a privacy issue. I speak of the specific concerns for women, cis and trans, because they’ve been given short shrift in much of the (perfectly justified) outrage on this issue. But this is something that affects everyone who plays the game. Fundamentally you should be given an uncoerced choice in whether or not you broadcast your name and other information in such an environment as WoW. It isn’t like Facebook where you create an account and then invite only your friends and family, with a good deal of control over how much strangers can see (for now, at least).

There is, also, for those of us geeks who combine our love for theory with our love for high fantasy, a philosophical dimension to all of this. To quote more from what Silverdawn said to me earlier:

“You know what bothers me? It’s that a gaming company as brilliant as Blizzard–this is, by the way, why I blame Activision–has completely betrayed its own belief in the great power of the personal character. It is the projection into the avatar, not the representation of the physical, gross self, that inspires the most passionate socialization with the greatest longevity.”

That distinction is critical. It’s very much a defining feature of roleplaying games, not just of the Internet as a whole. My own reply to this, as ever, wove personal experience into it:

“Well, for me… Quinnae and Qera were my looking glasses into life as woman. Though them, people knew me as one, and I knew myself as a woman for the first time. It was not just the struggles and the joys of the game itself, but the literary personality that emerged in the forums- the young woman whose eloquent barbs undressed the most macho of bloviators with grace that befit the Night Elf she played.

Even when a select few people were told I was “a guy” by me in confidence, the persona that Quinnae enabled me to explore and develop held me in good stead.

Had this RealID thing been in place back then, I’m not saying I’d never have come out, but WoW made the process a lot easier, the self-exploration much easier- because it did so neatly cleave between the real and the unreal while simulteanously weaving them together. The balance of that contradiction provided the netherspace in which I flourished. A place where I could move in semi-real social circles as a woman with consequences similar to the real world, but a fantasy realm surreal enough that accomodated as many masques and guises as a Harlequin ball.

Feminist scholar Hilary Rose spoke of what she called the ‘laboratory of dreams’ when discussing science fiction, and its ability to envision new social worlds that a reader could lose themselves in- daring to imagine a better future. Or a worse one.

And for me roleplaying always was that laboratory in which my own dreams were forged, even if I never quite knew it.”

For many people it never was “just a game.” Their right to privacy and- dare I call such a thing a right- their right to flights of fantasy ought to be respected. One of the greatest things about MMOs was the fact that your real life identifying markers were required only for the credit card that the folks at billing needed to see and that was that. It was all utterly and blissfully invisible to everyone you played with, night in and night out. Once upon a time, Blizzard banned people for revealing personal information about players.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, I guess, eh?

Not terribly long ago I wrote about the fool’s errand of trying to somehow empirically prove one’s gender or sexual identity and likened the very endeavour to castles in the air. As a metaphor, it’s not perfect, but damn does it sound good. It made for a great companion graphic, to boot. But the ultimate question is one I will return to today: How do I know I’m on the right path? How do I know transition is right for me?

As I’m so fond of saying, the proof is in the pudding. I’m simply a good deal more happy and fulfilled now. However, as of today, there is yet more lurking in the pudding that is just plain delicious. For the first semester ever in my college career I’ve pulled straight As, including two A+s. What does this have to do with transition? Prior to me coming out I all but flunked my way into an unofficial leave of absence from college, including simply letting the courses run the clock without withdrawing, thus earning me the equivalent of three F grades at the time. I was so lethargic that rising from bed every day at an appointed hour was an impossible dream, so sapped of energy that I nether knew nor cared how to declare a major, so blah that I could scarcely put pen to paper for anything worthwhile.

This past spring semester, however? In Classical Sociological Theory I got no grade below 100, quite literally. My teacher adored me, as did the other students. In Political Sociology I turned in my first term paper under my new legal name. It was christened with a grade of 97. In Astronomy my lowest score was a 99; extra credit on every exam ensured I got over 100% on all the others. To say nothing of all the extracurricular reading; the nonfiction books and textbooks purchased and read purely for fun. So my final grades should come as no surprise. And yet I am nearly moved to tears when I think on it- how close I was to ending my life sometimes, how I wretched away from the future like a vampire facing sunlight, how I feared the passing of each day. All within fairly recent memory. I never knew what it was like to feel “normal” or truly productive. I never knew what it was like to feel exhausted after a day’s labour one truly cared about.

Now I do.

Scientifically speaking, I cannot explain this. But I shouldn’t have to. The proof is there. I’ve always been a good student, managing a B average before gender dysphoria really kicked in. But this year I was the class genius girl. I polevaulted over challenges I’d have walked away from two years ago. Not only that, but I participated in clubs for the first time. I joined the Women’s Rights Coalition and as of next semester will be an officer therein. I hung out with people for lunch instead of eating alone. The lists of firsts go on.

Being trans over this period was its own experience as well, one fraught with complicated political implications which I am still trying to navigate. Before signing up to become a Women & Gender Studies major I went to the department chairs and very forthrightly asked them about their views on trans people, their assessment of transphobia in the department, oh and by the way I’m a trans woman myself, so do please go on. Inside I was rattling like a leaf but I retained my composure and a posture to match my professional dress, feeling every inch the equal of the department chair who sat across from me. Ready for conflict I was much surprised at the conciliatory tone she took and emphasised that transphobia would be verboten under her watch. Outlining the steps the school had taken, at the urging of the then-Women’s Studies Program, to make the policies of the campus trans affirmative, she also said if I had any trouble with the professors to see her or the other department chair personally.

I declared my major that same day.

The same sense of history compelled me to out myself to the Women’s Rights Coalition at the first meeting I attended. The subject was about body image and everyone discussed their complex relationships with their self image and what they see in the media, how they were raised, and so on. The other women told great stories, and when it was my turn I spoke from the well of passion I had as a trans woman. I spoke of how body image was a perpetual double bind, how appearing conventionally feminine could be a matter of life and death, and yet was a source of political consternation. Eventually, having spoken so passionately about the numerous issues trans women confront with regards to our bodies, I came out. Everyone seemed surprised, and yet I won plaudits and thanks from everyone there. I wasn’t treated any differently from what I could tell, and I’d become fast friends with two people from the organisation, receiving two big hugs at the end of that very afternoon.

I went for the pizza and stayed for the feminism; what I got was perhaps the best that such gatherings could offer, the tiniest glimpse of what that Better World ™ might look like.

Another trans woman I met that semester who is also becoming a good friend commented to me that I always seemed to be very aggressive and forward about my identity, and that I was quite brave for coming out as often as I did. “Brave or stupid,” I thought to myself balefully, knowing full well the all-or-nothing gambles I was taking at a very fragile point in my academic career. I told her that I did it because I couldn’t live with the Schrodinger-like uncertainty about whether or not certain groups I’d work with at college were transphobic in an overt way. But also, it was a desire to march with my spear thrust forward so to speak, to demonstrate that I wouldn’t be easily cowed and that I took some measure of pride in this. It was born of the hope that I would challenge some people’s perceptions if they were on the fence about trans issues.

Yet even then, for all of my supposed bravery, I knew I chose well those places I came out. Small groups that I knew were likely not to harbour overt ignorance in a school whose reputation for liberalism I knew well. I knew from the beginning that this didn’t mean I could take a positive welcome for granted, but I knew the odds were on my side.

Much harder was coming out in class, which I never did.

I knew that if I came out there I was taking a much much greater risk. I still remember one day in Theory when I was discussing the nature of intersecting oppression for the benefit of the class, many of whom seemed unfamiliar with the concept. I was usually very dry and academic in outlining basic sociological concepts, but on occasion I meshed in some personal experience and this was one such time. I came out as an “LGBT person” and yet as my sentence reached its culmination where I’d specify which letter there described me I paused and said “…I’m a lesbian.”

It still bothers me to this day that I felt that was a much safer corner of my identity to wave before the class, rather than the much more integral and vital trans element of who I am. The sense that I feared risking the good will of the other students, especially the women who praised my intellect and opinions, and who talked to me after class. The sense that I’d be seen as a “crossdresser” or a man in a skirt. For all the oppression and marginalisation lesbians face, it felt much safer to declare my allegiance to the L than the T.

This was the apogee of a struggle I had all semester. I knew my professors and the students thought highly of me. Here was this sharply dressed, eloquent young woman who could practically be teaching the class, wouldn’t it be awesome if I said “oh, and I’m a transgender woman”-  and challenge any stereotypes they might’ve had? Could I not have been a good example? Did I value passing for cis more than I did potentially helping other trans people by standing up and saying “Yes I am”?

These are the wages of marginalisation, of course. Why should I have that responsibility? Why should I feel that tension between my personal safety, reputation, and the need to advocate for my community? At the end of the day I know my safety has to come first, and that was what I chose. But I couldn’t deny that I also enjoyed the good graces and opinions of those around me. A taste of what could very well have been cis privilege.

I suppose that’s why I always felt more comfortable in the Women’s Rights Coalition, even as I dominated my sociology classes. Because I was out there, yet still one of the women. I was a friend and colleague. A receiver of hugs and soon to be taker of club attendance.

That’s the way it should be, I know, and mundane or simple as it may seem it’s something I cherish a great deal precisely for its rarity as an oasis of compassion.  A place where I can just be me for a little while and the entangling politics of my personal identity and its considerations can be checked at the door, even as I discuss weighty issues for all women, cis and trans alike. I do not feel the brand of outsider, nor the gag that holds back me naming myself as a trans woman. I can say “as a trans woman” as easily as “as a woman” and that feels wonderful.

I still get a little shiver each time I say “as a woman”, as if I’m keenly aware of how quickly that could be taken away from me, how fragile and tenuous it still is. Yet, at the end of the day, this semester is proof that I can and will make it. One way or another people will know trans women kick ass rather hard. Contrary to the assertions of privileged complainers, antifeminsts and transphobes, my activism and awareness has made me only more determined to succeed- as opposed to, say, just sitting around complaining, which is their fantasy about what people like me do. If this semester is any indication, I’m not going to let any barrier hold me back.

The various considerations I outlined here will be my constant companion, of course, and I will find ways to navigate these jagged shoals. One way or another I’ll be doing it as a fucking awesome female.